AIDS, which is now known to be caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HTV), has become a major threat to public health on a global scale. Preventing further spread of this disease is a major health priority in the United States and in many foreign countries. Although HIV was confirmed to be the causative agent of AIDS as early as 1984, few if any drugs or vaccines are publicly available which have been shown to treat or prevent AIDS. This is due, in large part, to the complexity of the causative agent itself.
HIV infects a variety of tissues and cells in the body. In addition, after entering a cell, the virus can "hide" in a cell of the central nervous system of a individual, some times or years, before symptoms of the disease appear.
Clinical progression in HIV-infected individuals is dependent upon continued virus expression via the recruitment of newly infected cells. Thus, some researchers believed that this etiological manifesation of viral propagation would provide the rationale for developing anti-HIV therapeutics. Indeed, nucleoside analogs which inhibit the viral reverse transcriptase have shown some clinical efficacy. However, the inherent toxicity of these drugs and the inevitable emergence of drug resistant HIV mutants in the course of treatment have removed this type of drug from serious consideration as an AIDS therapeutic. Accordingly, the search continues for novel, effective therapeutic treatments.
This invention provides a novel anti-HIV and thus, AIDS therapeutic that overcomes this limitation of present nucleotide-based therapies for AIDS prevention and treatment.